Killing Dragons by Fergus Fleming

Author:Fergus Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2000-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘As the strokes of midnight were clanging from the Campanile at Sondrio, a carriage rolled heavily into the courtyard of the Hotel della Maddelena.’1 With these evocative words, Edward Shirley Kennedy opened his account of the first ascent of Monte della Disgrazia in August 1862. It was not an exceptionally high mountain nor an outstandingly difficult one to climb. But the account of its conquest was memorable because it was written with such style and because it was the first article in the first edition of the Alpine Journal. The direct successor of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, the Alpine Journal was the truest yardstick to date of how popular the Alps had become. The first number was published in 1864 and positively fizzed with energy. Like its predecessor it gave accounts of new climbs; but it also contained a plethora of fascinating minutiae. Readers wrote in to ask whether such-and-such a man had climbed such-and-such a mountain, and whether anybody knew if the mountain even existed. They recommended Swiss inns, warned about incompetent guides, inveighed against banditry, and discussed boots, ropes and alpenstocks. Extraordinary images filled its pages: one man told how on Mont Blanc, just before dawn, he had cast a shadow that was completely green; another described phosphorescent snow sparkling from his companion’s boots with each step that he took; a third related how his hair stood on end - as did his companions’ crêpe veils - and how his upraised hands sang like a kettle in the electrical discharge of a thunderstorm. And booming from page to page came the echoes of Kennedy’s declaration on the peak of Monte della Disgrazia: ‘I am therefore justified in claiming for Alpine climbing the first rank among athletic sports, as the nourisher of those varied elements that go to form all that is commendable in the constitution of the Anglo-Saxon character.’2

The excitement was overwhelming - reminiscent, in a way, of that felt by citizens of a newly founded republic. Here was a group of men, unfettered by any rules save those they laid down, in thrall to no sovereign or governmental body, who were charged with opening a new world in a manner of their own choosing. Best of all, theirs was a republic without political or territorial responsibility, one that ignored boundaries (could one say that a precipice was intrinsically French, Italian or Swiss?), whose message was supranational (the Swiss and Italian Alpine Clubs were founded in 1863, the German and Austrian in 1869, the French in 1874 and the American soon after; a Carpathian Club sprang up in Poland) and whose scope was limitless - in the first number of the Alpine Journal a man described a climb in Sinai; soon reports would pour in from Norway, Greenland, Spitsbergen, Turkey, the Andes, the Rockies, the Caucasus, the Himalayas, anywhere, in fact, where there was a mountain. Theirs was a republic of the mind and the body. What did a man think of when he reached the top? Kennedy asked himself on Monte della Disgrazia.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.